


Petals on the Bed, Stains on Your Skin

by OkProblematic



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Zayn's in the band still, and I don;'t knwo what else to tag this, flowerchild!niall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-22
Updated: 2014-02-22
Packaged: 2018-01-13 10:48:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1223488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OkProblematic/pseuds/OkProblematic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I promised 1k of Innocent!Flowerchild!Niall and here it is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Petals on the Bed, Stains on Your Skin

Sometimes, Zayn thinks his heart is useless, dumb and heavy and dangling in his chest. He wonders why it’s caged in fragile bone and hung by flimsy arteries, wonders why that is if it does nothing to protect the damned thing from how Niall makes him feel. He just wants to know why Niall makes his chest hurt.

It’s not that big of a deal, if he’s being honest; it’s just that Niall is giggling as he runs barefoot through the tall grass in their backyard, flowers in his hair and Zayn’s sweater on his chest while Zayn sits and watches him with a blank page in his lap, empty pages staring up at him.

The bare pages remind him of Niall’s barren skin, devoid of tattoos and other obscurities. Maybe, maybe tonight he’ll have Niall lie naked on the bed and he’ll compare their skin tones, pale and tanned. Maybe he’ll use his finger to trace over all of the places where he’s got tattoos onto Niall’s skin. He’ll probably take a marker and draw a little bouquet of flowers on the inside of Niall’s knee, a cute little set, strung together by ribbon around their skinny stems.

Because Niall’s skin is pale and pretty and pink, most of the time Zayn runs out of colours to describe it. Most of the time, Zayn gives up while he’s ahead and moves on to other bits of Niall to write about. Today, his mind, the train of tracks that don’t connect and constantly derail, is having none of that, though. So he watches.

He watches Niall’s bare feet cut through the grass as he runs and looks for flowers. The blonde is wearing Zayn’s sweater, the one from Japan that’s really an ugly colour that he only bought because Niall had gotten so excited in the store. The stupid thing is ruined now, holes everywhere and covered in stains of dirt and tea but Niall likes it and the awful olive green hue of it. It covers most of his thighs, to the point Zayn can’t see his pants, but he doesn’t mind; they’re alone here.

Niall’s got a crown of flowers in his hair, little circle of yellow daises pushing his fringe into his eyes. It’s strung together with nothing more than the stems of the flowers, done by Niall’s careful fingers, thin and nimble. He looks happy here and Zayn wonders why he ever leaves.

Zayn leaves because he is in a world famous band that sings shitty songs about boys like Niall, innocent and sweet. Niall is always sad to see him go because he’s always gone for so long, Zaynie, so he takes Niall with him when he can, tucks the boy into his pocket and laughs into his shoulder. They sing a lot of songs about blue, the blue of Niall’s eyes.

But Zayn is tired of comparing the blue to oceans that swallow sailors in shades of navy and white, of ice bergs that distract the ships and cause their end. He’s tired of the likeliness of the colour of blood before the oxygen gets to it, tired of the sky and all of its shades and flashes. He quite likes the idea of blue denim and Royal Cymbidiums and Hydrangeas; maybe the colour of mermaid tails is good too.

He’s also timeworn on the things that are red, red like Niall’s lips. But that colour is forever changing and therefore Zayn cannot try to write about it fully, only in passing. He also can’t seem to include the details of the freckles that littler Niall shoulders or the extra pale scar across the back of one alabaster calf. 

There are little swirls and loops in the margins on the page he’s opened to, vague thoughts of Niall and almost attempts at real words. Zayn writes better while he’s smoking but Niall won’t let him smoke in the backyard and he doesn’t want to move, really. He remembers buying this house in the middle of nowhere with the acres in the back because Niall had always said how he wanted to grow a few flowers. He remembers bringing Niall here and then proceeding to tell the boy that all of this was his and the look Niall had given him.

The older boy is snapped out of his daydream when another dizzy dreamer stumbles into place in front of him, kneels on the ground and places a chain of little white flowers in Zayn’s hair and he smiles softly, catches the wrist in front of him and presses a kiss to the pulse. Niall giggles and takes the notepad from him, lays it across his own lap and draws a bundle of California Poppies in the center of the page, careful drags of the pencil on the paper and Zayn just watches him.

Niall draws with his tongue peeking out of his lips, soft furrow in his eyebrows. He’s concentrated more than he needs to be really, for a silly drawing in Zayn’s notebook that he could probably trace with his eyes closed. But this is Niall and he is happy and Zayn is happy and they’re content here. Zayn thinks they’ll sleep under the stars tonight, possibly.

Sometimes Zayn has to stop and realize how gone he really is for Niall, has to stop and remember that they are only human, small and fragile and so easily breakable. He has to remember that he is not invincible in the way that Niall seems to be and he is not going to last like Niall seems to. One day, he’ll age and wither away, have to watch Niall do the same and maybe then he’ll stop and really worry because he doesn’t know what he’s going to do after they’re both gone.

He always wonders what happens when people die, thinks maybe they become stars. Zayn hopes that he and Niall don’t float up to be part of the sky because Niall is so out of place anywhere that isn’t soiled ground. He hopes that when they decompose, they’ll be holding hands and that when they come back it’ll be as two flowers, pretty red roses maybe, with their stem entwined.

But these are only vague hopes because for now, Niall is finishing drawing flowers all over Zayn’s last clean notebook and he’s giggling because he knows and Zayn can’t tell him to stop, could never dream of doing such a thing. 

One day, things will change but for now Niall will settle next to him, wearing Zayn’s stupid sweater and a small smile, and Zayn will hold him close, smile into his hair because they are in love and Niall is made of dirt and giggles and flowers while Zayn is made of sad and cigarettes and pencil lead.

**Author's Note:**

> Also littleredmalik on Tumblr


End file.
